How do I eagerly Include the child and grandchild elements of an entity in Entity Framework Code First?

Question

Imagine three entities (Customer, Book, Author) related like this:

A Customer has many Books

A Book has one Author

I use that data to print a report

Answer 1

There's an overload for Include that accepts a string which can denote the full path to any extra properties you need:

var customers = db.Customers.Include("Books.Author");

It looks strange because "Author" isn't a property on a collection of books (rather a property on each individual book) but it works. Give it a whirl.